in the margins
by puertoricanjane
Summary: "There's a story there," Varric says, tapping his nose meaningfully. (Varric, Hawke, and a different sort of love story.)


"There's a story there," Varric says, tapping his nose meaningfully. Hawkes plural then, Bethany with one eye on the door even with fingers curled around a tankard of ale instead of her mage's staff; Hawke still in her mercenary's armor, the blood red streak across her nose an oddity to be puzzled over rather than just another facet of her face.

"Hm," Hawke says because she doesn't know better yet, hasn't learned that everything's a story, when it comes down to it; how good it is all depends on the teller. "l suppose. Really, it's just to hide a scar, albeit glorious and won in battle—"

Bethany, making a valiant but mistimed effort to sip her drink instead of cradling it and looking like templars will drag her to the Gallows for indulging, almost snorts ale out her nose.

"Is that how it happened?" Bethany asks, laughter a bright thread through her voice, smile stretching wide and showing off all her teeth. Normally her smiles are small and muted and the shock of sun peeking through the clouds is how Bethany becomes Sunshine, in his head if not yet out loud. "I recall differently, but please, do go on about this glorious battle, Sister. I would love to hear more. It sounds like one for the ages."

"An unreliable narrator." Varric puts a hand over his heart, too much delight to really fool anybody. "Hawke, I didn't know you had it in you."

"Don't listen to her, Varric. Can't you see she's been drinking?"

"I do, on account of having bought the drinks myself. The floor's yours, Sunshine," Varric says, nodding at her.

There's a noticeable pause over Sunshine but Bethany lets it pass, relaxing into the well worn edges of sisterly teasing. "She had just taken up sword fighting, see, on the provision that she not go at it alone, under any circumstances. Of course Sister's never been one for listening or following the rules—"

"How dare you, I've never broken a rule in my life—"

"—because _clearly_ they were meant for less talented people and not budding swordswomen like her. Keep in mind, Varric, it's only been a day. So Sister has the brilliant idea of stealing off when Father and Mother aren't looking and ends up nicking herself in the nose with the pointy end of a blade."

"Huh," Varric says. "Still doesn't explain the whole blood of my enemies thing Hawke's got going on."

"That's where I come in," Bethany says, eyes casting about the room before lowering her voice. "She comes to me and I do the best I can considering my youth and inexperience, plus panic at seeing my sister in such a right state, but there's still a scar to explain away. Thankfully, Sister's never short on brilliant ideas. Her fool proof plan? Just stick a bit of paint on it, of course."

"Oh, you complete and utter wretch," Hawke says, the smear in question wrinkling with her nose as she laughs. She's impossibly fond and Varric can't help but think of his time with the Hawkes as a study of what a sibling relationship is supposed to look like. "However is Varric going to respect me now?"

"You've managed just fine without it so far," Varric says, smirking, and Hawke pulls a face across the table before she cracks, and the line between business associates and friends has always been blurrier with Varric than most, but this is how it starts: a blood red streak, Hawke's rough laugh.

x.

Hawke collects rogues and warriors and apostates the same way she collects moth eaten scarves which is to say: with alarming frequency.

Rivaini, two sheets to the wind, deeply resents the comparison. "I am no moth eaten scarf, thank you very much!" She's got an elbow on his shoulder, leaning over as he writes. Varric kindly doesn't inch his parchment away. "Only the brightest, gaudiest, non moth eaten fabric for me."

"Everyone's a critic," Varric says. "Still, you have to admit it's a problem."

"Your prose?" Isabela says, wickedly. "Yes, I could see how that would be a problem. What you need, my dear, handsome dwarf, is an editor."

"What do you call this?" Varric asks, nudging her pint. "I keep you hydrated, you offer unsolicited literary criticism, it's a win-win."

"Moth eaten scarves," Isabela repeats, all but shuddering even while shifting to wrap her arms around him, a drunken octopus clinging to his back. Of all the things to be used to. "Hawke is a strange one, isn't she?"

There's fondness there, and that's the other thing about Hawke and her penchant for taking people and making them hers. Isabela doesn't realize, but Varric can see the shape of moments playing out before him, and watches, and wonders. Hawke just has a way about her. Like moth to flame or—Varric's mouth twists wryly—scarf.

"Not half as strange as you, Rivaini," Varric says.

x.

He watches Aveline knock Hawke into the dirt and Hawke grin up at her with bloodied teeth and thinks _maybe_ , but he also thought _maybe_ at the way she knocks elbows and knees with Isabela at the Hanged Man, or will catch Merrill's hand and just squeeze, or the way she has of looking at Fenris, or smiling at Anders.

He used to think they were all a bit in love with Hawke but now he's starting to wonder if Hawke isn't a bit in love with them.

x.

"I wonder," Hawke says. Stops. Varric looks up to see her go for her nose, remember the paint, then scratch her finger over her cheek. It's one of her tells. A warrior with a rogue's heart Hawke may be but she's no real skill for Wicked Grace.

"You wonder?" Varric prompts. It's just the two of them in his suite; Varric sorting through letters, Hawke sitting in relative silence. It prickles at him. It's a disservice to say Hawke is never so contemplative but well. It's usually not where most people could see.

Hawke's eyes lower. She touches a chip in the stone, tracing its forked path. Elbows and knives, cards and sovereigns, tankards of swill, heaviest of tomes to thinnest of paperbacks, roll after roll of parchment. Ink. This table's seen it all, but what Hawke sees when she looks at it, Varric can't even begin to guess.

"Carver," Hawke says. "What he'd look like sitting here. How'd he fit." She laughs; it sounds like regret. "Not very gracefully, I imagine. But...still. I wonder."

Varric wonders, too. Sunshine and Hawke talk about him every now and then, enough for him to have a rough mental picture. Strong arm, stronger jaw. A perpetually ruddy cheek. Shoulders broad enough to hold his sisters and the world if not for an inferiority complex a mile wide. Too many feelings to ultimately know what to do with.

Junior, he thinks. He'd call him Junior.

Hawke looks up. There's something hesitant in her eyes but it blurs into edges both familiar and not as she looks at him, as her mouth softens, curls. "Do you think you could tell me?"

There's only one real answer. Varric leans back in his chair, correspondence forgotten. Bright eyes, empty hands. Anything for you, Hawke.

He says, "Of course."

x.

"Are you like Sister?" Bethany asks, once, as they traipse through the Wounded Coast. She's been working up to ask him something, and Varric hung back with her on the edges of the group, content she'd get to it in her own time. It's no hardship. The Wounded Coast could use more Sunshine.

Still, for the life of him he can't work out her meaning, so Varric adjusts Bianca over his shoulders, giving Bethany a sideways smirk. "Dashing, debonair? I hate to break it to you, Sunshine, but those are qualities specific to me."

She laughs but shakes her head, eyes flickering to where Hawke is keeping pace with Aveline at the front of their merry band. "I just...I don't know. It's familiar. You flirt, and insinuate, but you never mean anything by it. It's just something to say."

Bethany looks at him expectantly, and Varric wonders the last time he so completely lost the thread of conversation. There's something she is and isn't saying, but there's no time to parse it out, because there are bandits, then giant spiders, and Hawke has to be talked out of giving an amulet found in spider ichor to their mother.

It sticks with him, though: am I like Hawke.

x.

They both lose a sibling down in the Deep Roads; betrayal, death. Varric thinks about symmetry and dramatic irony and hates it. He drinks. He regrets. He tries to write but gets as far as _sun_ before he tears it up. If only Bartrand had caught the Blight.

Hawke is—changed. She puts on a good performance but it's all smoke and mirrors. Her laughter splinters; her smiles almost never reach her eyes.

"It's just you now," Sunshine had said at the last, a noose around Hawke's neck, or an old one, tightening.

Grief weighed Hawke down before the City of Chains ever did.

x.

Varric isn't a man of truths but here's a hard one: life happens with or without you. He pays off the Coterie, makes sure Daisy doesn't forget to eat, keeps an ear down to the ground for Hawke. They play Wicked Grace in Hawke's fancy new estate and Hawke laughs off a bad hand, laughs off everything. They follow her on the same fool's errands through the same sewers and alleys and coasts, one part nostalgia, two parts therapy. Isabela digs a spider out her boot; Hawke laughs and laughs and laughs and it sounds nothing like splintering.

x.

"You should fire Isabela," Hawke tells him. "This isn't an acceptable use of turgid. Or girth. There's only one specific context to which that might apply and knocking on the door isn't it."

"I'll concede turgid," Varric says, "but I'm not so willing to concede girth. Knocks can have girth to them. Case in point: Aveline."

"She does have a rather dire sounding one, doesn't she?" Hawke says, fondly. "She'll come round for tea with Mother and I'll think it's the bloody templars or something."

"See? If it's good enough for our illustrious Captain of the Guard, it's good enough for Donnen."

"I still think you and Isabela have a bet to see how much you can get away with using dirty words in non dirty contexts."

"Hey, it's called Hard in Hightown," Varric says. "I have to live up to the title somehow. Maker knows my publisher keeps trying to get me to add a romantic interest."

"Does it need one?" Hawke asks and after years of watching and wondering it's as simple as the flicker of her eyes, the press of teeth to her lip.

Varric looks at her, Sunshine's voice ringing in his ears. "No," he says. "I guess not."

x.

Everyone knows he is a one crossbowman which is true enough except the truth is malleable. So, there's Bianca. There's Bianca and then there isn't and not only because theirs is a love destined to exist only in the margins.

Things Varric wants: a good ale, ink on his hands and a quill in his fingers, his mother's convalescence, his brother's respect, a room hanging onto his every word. People — he's never really _wanted_ people, has always been more comfortable writing tragedies than romances. But Bianca — her spark and her wit, the way being around her always felt like being balanced on the edge of a knife and not even because of the very real threat of assassination. The most brilliant mind he's ever known.

Bianca steals his heart with her clever hands and her clever mouth except you can't steal what was freely given, just like how Varric can't help looking at Bianca and wanting forever or some rough approximation of it.

It figures the one time he goes and falls in love it's a romantic tragedy; a tale paltry enough for the Hightown masses, if not for how it's the one story he'll never tell. But it's enough to write and receive letters, to hold her memory and her crossbow close. He's not lacking in friends or company. It's enough.

He's enough.

x.

"You have ink on your nose, you silly dwarf," greets Hawke and for all that he'd heard the smile in her voice before he sees it Varric still startles at fingers brushing over his face. But there it is plain as day: Hawke leaning over the table, rubbing the bridge of his nose with a smile.

"What can I say, I've always been a fan of your look, Hawke," Varric says, relaxing when her fingers fall away. Hawke's always been if not careless then carefree in her affections. It translates to each of them differently, though, and he and Hawke have never touched much. Varric's not a touchy feely guy. "Thought I'd give it my own spin."

She's stolen his pint upon sitting back and Hawke sets it down hastily, dragging the back of her hand over her mouth with a laugh. Bright eyes and his ink on her fingertips and Varric's heart—it almost does something stupid. "Imitation is the highest form of flattery or so I hear. Still, I'd hate to distract from the prettiest broken nose in Kirkwall," Hawke says, grinning at him.

"Oh, Hawke," says Varric, because it's always been easier. "The whole Free Marches, at least."

x.

It doesn't feel like falling.

It feels like looking up and your best friend is still your best friend but there's new dimension to them. Hawke's always been larger than life; he's never been an idle observer or even an impartial one but there's something under his sternum that wasn't there before. Varric swallows and smiles around it. He keeps swallowing and smiling. It's different from Bianca. Not better or worse, just—different. He doesn't want to learn the shape of her waist with his hands so much as he wants to know if there's farm girl freckles under all that paint.

With Bianca, he wanted forever. With Hawke, he just wants here, now, this: shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, Hawke's hand on his elbow and head thrown back in a laugh.

x.

Hawke stops laughing, after Leandra. She was loud, after Bethany, after Carver; now all her laughter is spent and the Hawke he's writing has only a passing resemblance to the one in real life.

He finds her at the Hanged Man, drinking more often than not. Once, he comes down to see Isabela with her hand on Hawke's arm, but Hawke turns away from the grave tenderness in her eyes, knocking back the rest of her drink. Varric is a coward and leaves them to it. This — there are no words for this.

He's half asleep when she picks the lock to his room and sits on the floor in front of his bed. Even hunched over, she's too tall. Her nose is bare, the skin across the bridge raised and silvery. She doesn't bother with the paint anymore.

Varric blinks, stares. "Hawke," he says, making to sit up, but she puts a hand on his chest, forcing him back down.

"I picked your lock," Hawke says.

"I see that," Varric says. "Congratulations. We'll make a proper rogue of you yet."

Hawke's quiet. She's always quiet, now. Her hand is still on his chest. It moves up, fingers splaying over his heart. Varric inhales. He watches her face and it's like learning her all over again.

"I wanted," Hawke says. Her mouth twists uselessly. "I don't know. I talk and talk but I never say much of anything. I don't ever say I love you. Any of you."

"Not in so many words, no," Varric says. "It's not your way. It's not really our way either."

"Maybe it should be," Hawke says, something desperate in her eyes. "I wish—" She stops. She doesn't have to say what she wishes. Her voice lowers to a murmur. "It just seems so pointless. All the words in the world and I can't tell the people who matter when they're still here."

It feels awkward having this conversation with him laying down and her half bent over him. Varric endures. Anything for you, Hawke, he'd thought in this same room what feels like a lifetime ago; he hadn't even begun to scratch the surface of what that means.

"You're the best friend I've ever had," Varric tells her. He's never said it so plainly before. He wasn't lying when he said it wasn't their way. "You don't have to say it for me or anyone else to feel it." It's enough, Hawke, he thinks. _You're_ enough. More than, in fact.

Hawke looks at him with the same grave tenderness that was in Isabela's eyes. She draws her lip between her teeth, hesitation there too before it clears and she stoops over further, resting her head near his heart.

"Is this alright?" she asks, a whisper of breath. Her eyes are already closed and her fingers over his heart twitch, curl. Making a home in the place she already lives.

Varric's hand finds the new grey in her hair. He strokes a hand over it, throat tight. "Yeah, Hawke," he says, smiling; "This is just fine."

x.

"I told the Seeker you were in love with Daisy," Varric says, years and away. They're on the ramparts at Skyhold. Hawke's let her hair grow long; the wind whips it about her face and she laughs, holding the half black, half silvery tangle back with her hand.

"Good choice," Hawke says, nose crinkling at him. The blood red streak is as vivid as the day they met. "We were all a little in love with Merrill, I think."

"You and Rivaini, sure," Varric says, raising his eyebrows. "Elf and— " He clears his throat roughly, not letting Blondie come to his lips. "Well. You know that's not true."

"Hm," Hawke says. "You then. Who couldn't help but be in love with you?"

"You wouldn't believe the number of people who have managed," Varric says, dryly.

"Not me," Hawke says, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and squeezing, her smile soft, eyes bright. "But goodness knows I certainly never tried."

There's that new-old ache in his sternum when he looks at her, as he silently catalogs all the subtle and not so subtle ways she's changed in their years apart. Varric swallows and smiles around it. It feels like nostalgia. It feels like love. "Don't I know it, Hawke," he says. "Don't I know it."


End file.
